TNK FEST Preview

Dan Apodaca
Talent Buyer For Schubas

We talked TNK Fest, what Dan actually does for Schubas, the future of the annual club fest, and the mountain of emails he gets on a daily basis.


DA:
Dan Apodaca


So Dan, you are the talent buyer for Lincoln Hall and Schubas correct? Does that go into the Audiotree spectrum as well?

DA: I'm the Talent Buyer for Schubas and Patrick VanWagoner is the Talent Buyer for Lincoln Hall. Audiotree sessions have their own dedicated booking team, but we work closely with them, sharing recommendations and contacts.

For those that aren't in the industry can you describe what exactly a talent buyer does?

DA: I email people all day long. Seriously, though, my job has a lot of different facets, but the short answer is that I book the shows. That typically starts with an agent reaching out to me, though when booking local and for events like TNK, we often start the conversations. There's a lot of the process that is directed by the artist team and tour logistics, which I think people may not realize. But in the end, it's about doing everything we can to ensure the best show and artist experience. As someone with the privilege of a public voice, I consider it my responsibility to book equitably and represent the wide variety of perspectives in Chicago. I try to ensure that I'm not just booking shows that sell tickets, and not just booking artists that are already popular, but that I'm also giving opportunities to artists who I believe deserve more attention. I feel very lucky to book a venue that is not limited to one genre identity.

TNK is a huge club festival that spans five venues over five days, but this wasn't always the case correct? Can you give us a brief history of the festival?

DA: Yeah, that's right. It originally started at just Schubas in 2005. This was before Lincoln Hall opened. I moved to Chicago in 2012, so I wasn't here for the early days, but the former Talent Buyer Matt Rucins did an excellent job building the festival year after year, and growing to include other local venues. The idea behind TNK is two-fold. First, that it's an opportunity for us to show people the artists who we've loved over the past year and who we believe they'll love. Second, that January in Chicago is typically slower for touring bands, so we can bring cool shows in to help people survive the brutal cold and forget about slush for a few nights.

Over the last several years you've featured quite a few Chicago bands in the festival. Has it always been the mission of TNK to feature local artists?

DA: It's definitely always been a major component of the festival. I'd say the two conceptual pillars of our TNK booking are: what's cool and upcoming & what's cool in Chicago. Since locals often land in both those categories, they absolutely play a big part in our booking. We're fortunate in Chicago to have a strong, eclectic music scene, so we're always able to have a strong presence for locals. And we appreciate that very much. It's really the best to get to book some of our favorite local artists on the festival every year.

With TNK and the Audiotree Festival along with the week in week out shows at Lincoln Hall and Schubas your company features hundreds of artists a year. How difficult is it to narrow down who to book?

DA: It's a challenge! Honestly, the toughest part is just not having enough dates in the year for all the great artists we want to book. For me, it always starts with listening to the music. Is it good? Is it interesting? Is it doing something that people are loving right now? Is it doing something totally new and different? I like to think I've developed a decent sense for what connects with different crowds, beyond just my personal taste. From there, I do as much research as I can into their history and following to try to gauge how the show will do. In the end, it's always a gamble, so you have to trust your instincts and believe in people.

And how many emails and submissions do you get daily?

DA: I get somewhere in the range of 100-200 emails a day. It's a mix of internal things I just need to be aware of and work that comes in, but it's definitely a LOT of emails, ha ha. I've become very capable with gmail shortcuts. For TNK 2020, we received somewhere in the range of 200-300 submissions between all the venues involved.

If TNK were to expand to one other venue, which one would you want to bring under the umbrella?

DA: It would somewhat depend on the development of the festival, but there are definitely great independent Chicago venues that could make sense for future TNKs. We've got ideas for expanding the festival into realms like film screenings and podcasts, and I could see various cool things working well in spaces like Constellation, Music Box, or Victory Gardens. We're continually looking for ways to grow TNK and work with other great Chicago arts groups.